Chris Christie and Terry McAuliffe, Bill de Blasio and Marty Walsh, this is your election:

1. Ken Cuccinelli almost won. Maybe it's true that Ken Cuccinelli lost because he was associated with the Tea Party wing of the GOP, which was supposed to have been the story line. But the truth, as votes still trickle in, is that he was 10,000 votes away from winning. That means that had the government not shut down, had Terry McAuliffe made one more mistake, had the timing of the Tea Party revolution in the House come just a month earlier, Cuccinelli might have weathered his party's misdeeds and succeeded....  More»

Right now, there is no credible, empowered, knowledgeable, and forceful defender of the National Security Agency inside the executive branch.

That's not to say that the vast majority of the nation's intelligence collection programs aren't worth fighting for. They are. Someone like Bill Clinton, a guy who understands stuff and knows how to explain it to folks, might want to stand up for them before it's too late.

Here's why:

The White House feels hemmed in by decisions President Obama did not make. The president is angry at the intelligence community for messing up....  More»

By law, the president and heads of intelligence agencies must keep the congressional intelligence committees informed of any "significant intelligence activity."

When is bugging the cellphones of significant allies not considered a "significant intelligence activity"? When it's part of an ongoing program, one that started at a time when Congress was rolling over for the executive branch, when war was afoot, when even senators and representatives briefed on the NSA's domestic surveillance program wanted plausible deniability?

There is no statutory requirement to brief the committees every time the NSA exercises its authorities....  More»

"Ever since the Church Committee hearings, we have been at bat with a one-ball, two-strike count on us, you know. We aren't taking close pitches."

So said National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden in 2001, when Vice President Cheney's staff asked the NSA to significantly expand the ambit of the agency's domestic collection using the president's inherent authorities, or duties, to protect the nation, which are spelled out in Article II of the Constitution.

David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, thought that the NSA should use its technology to intercept emails and telephone calls sent from one domestic terminal to another, and was upset to learn...  More»

The author of the @natsecwonk Twitter account, a gossipy, often invective-laced anonymous Washington beat sheet, could have been a thousand people. The bio line: "A keen observer of of the foreign policy and national security scene. I'm abrasive and bring the snark. Unapologetically says what everyone else only thinks."

Maybe it was a journalist who covered the State Department, or a low-level contractor, or a disgruntled junior researcher at a think tank. It could even have been me (and one of its targets thought it was, for awhile).

Turns out it was someone who really was in a position to dish....  More»

For the GOP, Chris Christie is on the leading edge of politics, the most broadly acceptable captain of a change movement that the Republican Party can embrace. That makes him the de facto leader of red state America, even if it's not willing to accept him just yet.

One of my favorite axioms of presidential politics is that the times choose the (wo)man; the (wo)man does not choose the times. In change elections, a solid mass of voters tend to side with history, and they often choose the candidate whose personal qualities least remind them of what they're voting against....  More»

The Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, has three central functional goals: Allow tens of millions more Americans to purchase private health insurance; expand Medicaid's coverage of the poor; and slow or temper the growth of health care costs over the long term by more equitably distributing the financial burden and by tinkering with the incentives that have evolved along with the current system.

The glitchy website places none of these three goals in jeopardy. If you don't now have health insurance, then you still don't have health insurance. Your life is pretty much status quo ante....  More»

Do leaks of classified information damage national security in tangible, meaningful ways? Probably, yes. Even the leakers must admit that they cannot entirely foresee the consequences of making public the methods and technology marshaled to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Edward Snowden may be a genius, but one practical reason why leaking classified information is illegal is because the judgment of one person cannot possibly be submitted for the judgment of others, particularly those who have access to more of the big picture in a highly compartmentalized system....  More»

With some exceptions, the media has decided that it is well and good to frame the government shutdown as a hostage situation perpetuated by a small band of Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

But is that what's really going on here?

There are surface similarities. In a hostage scenario, a small band of thugs threaten to harm people unless they get their way. Yes, that is the negotiating tactic Republicans are using. Give us what we want, and then we will release the government back to you.

But what's happening in Washington is not a hostage situation....  More»

The Street still thinks this will end peacefully. The Street — you know, Wall Street, where money flows, where collective wisdom incorporates all there is to know every nanosecond, where expectations are often more important than reality.

This is, of course, the great hostage taking of 2013, where the full faith and credit of the United States is being held ransom by people who got elected as Republicans, but see themselves more as conservatives.

"How is this going end?"

The easiest scenario is still the one where Boehner folds and goes home. This suggests an end time of around 11:59 p....  More»

I have few qualms with Ezra Klein's 13 reasons why government is failing piece, but I think his main point needs to be modified. Government is failing, he writes. I would add that it is purposely failing. It is operating precisely as a plurality of political conservatives want it to. The government is executing policies designed to reduce confidence in itself. The shutdown is not a consequence of a broken system. It is a consequence of a system that incentivizes particular outcomes over majority ones, rules that empower political minorities, and of the political and social needs of the humans who inhabit it....  More»

The "active shooter" situation that wasn't paralyzed downtown Washington today, and as of this writing, there are still heightened security measures in place. The panicked reaction to reports of what happened began after the incident itself was resolved; the suspect apparently had been killed, and a police officer was being tended to, and those on the scene did not find any reason to believe that more people were involved.

On CNN, anchors raised questions about security measures, and whether they were up to the task of protecting the U.S. government....  More»

Special agents of the U.S. Secret Service protect the president and his family. But responsibility for securing the White House itself falls to a branch of the service known as the Uniformed Division, consisting of 1,300-plus sworn police officers and technicians. While agents and their exploits are glamorized and the subject of fictional thrillers and films, the U.D. officers often have a more dangerous job.

They're the ones who establish and control the outer perimeters around the White House. They're in direct contact with the public; they're responsible for screening White House visitors and preventing harmful people from even getting close to...  More»

Tea-party affiliated House Republicans are not the cause of what ails the Congress right now. Don't blame them if the government shuts down, or even if the government moves toward default.

Assuming that the reasonable way forward for opponents of ObamaCare is to try and fix the program's flaws legislatively — and that is a reasonable way forward for legislation that has been passed, ratified by the Supreme Court, subject to regulation and about to be implemented — there is one person who stands in the way of the House voting on a reasonable budget....  More»

Courtesy of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), we now have a glimpse at what may be the next set of National Security Agency documents to drop from the Guardian and Washington Post. At a Senate hearing today, Wyden asked NSA Director Keith Alexander about the agency's collection of American cellphone geolocation data.

Under the formerly secret interpretations of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, the NSA had the legal authority to collect "telephony metadata" without an individualized order or warrant on everyone. (It now needs a certification of purpose, basically, from the FISA Court....  More»

Human begins make decisions in ways that remain opaque to economists and psychologists. As a sometime participant in public arguments about important issues, I know how easy it is to rig the debate by employing particularly effective tactics that don't often correspond to the facts at hand. To debate is to interpret, of course, but good arguments often stand by themselves without the need to use maneuvers that are designed to elicit strong emotional responses. Here are five cards I find to be particularly interesting. A few of them, I think, can be destructive....  More»

I try to make my posts class-neutral, but let's be real: The release of a brand-new iPhone is an event that would make Thorstein Veblen roll in his gilded, flashy, conspicuous grave. The 5s is a very nice phone, but it contains no features that will immediately change your life, or make your work experience that much more efficient, or enhance your social status beyond that temporary, "Wow, so that's what a gold one looks like; can I try the fingerprint sensor?" If you need a new phone, then by all means, the 5s is a wonder of engineering and design and you should get one....  More»

Gun violence in America confounds me, even though I am sure of many things:

I am sure that there are too many guns, and also that there is no way to get rid of them.

It's obvious that guns, and their availability, play a huge role in routine gun violence, which is less shocking but more prevalent and destructive than mass shootings.

I am sure that most people with mental health issues can hold a security clearance and be functional and trusted to perform key jobs.

I am certain that the vast majority of people with schizophrenia will not resort to gun violence....  More»